Cosy Sweater Nails

Temperatures have been feeling much more seasonal the last couple days here in Halifax, which means I’ve been living in my most cosy of sweaters. & it also means I’ve been seriously digging sweater nail art! 

There is just something unnatural about rocking knit nails when it’s 18 degrees celsius outside (that’s 64 degrees fahrenheit to my non-Canadian friends!) So as soon as temperatures started to dipped, I decided to pull out my knit nail vinyls for some perfectly November-worthy nails. 

For this manicure, the polishes I used were: 

  • Base Coat: Essie Grow Stronger
  • Top Coat: Seche Vive
  • Essie Under the Twilight
  • Ardene Daydreamer
  • Sally Hansen Hard As Nails Hard To Get
  • URSugar Nail Vinyls item #AUB39877 — Click to buy
  • NailStuff.ca gold triangle studs — Gold Mixed Decoration Nail wheel 
  • Latex Free Make Up Sponge (for sponging over nail stencil) 
  • Edge Perfection Polish Barrier 

I’m really feeling this design using these heart/knit pattern vinyls from URSugar. They definitely remind me of a cosy sweater & just make me want to pull on my softest, most plush sweater & curl up on the couch with a peppermint mocha or gingerbread latte. This is my absolute favourite time of year & I just want to soak in every moment! Before we know it, snow will be falling & I’ll be complaining about being cold. 

What do you think of this design? Are you a fan of the sweater pattern nail? Share your thoughts with me down in the comments! 

Kitty Cat Nails 🖤

Happy Halloween Eve everybody! 🎃

So confession time: I’m the queen of the last minute Halloween costume. Seriously I was the girl always looking for something to wear the day before Halloween (or worse, the day of Halloween). This year I’ve got our Halloween all ready, but if it wasn’t already prepared, then I would probably go with last minute Halloween costume go to: a kitty 🐱. & if I were going as a kitty for Halloween, these would be the perfect nails to go along with that costume!

Polishes used for this design:

  • Base Coat: OPI Natural Nail Base Coat
  • Top Coat: Seche Vive
  • Essie Wrap Me Up
  • Essie Merino Cool
  • Sally Hansen Hard As Nails Black Heart
  • Sally Hansen I ♥️ Nail Art Pen in Red
  • Small detail brush & dotting tool from Bundle Monster

These nails were surprisingly easy to achieve. The leopard print is just blobs of colour outlines with black using your small detail brush. The cat is a bit harder to do, but not by too much—just takes a little bit patience to get it done. & if you feel like you can’t freehand a kitty, you can just as easy wear leopard print on all your fingers instead or use a sticker or decal. 

Yep, that’s a onesie & what inspired my colour choices for this leopard print. Who else has totally worn a onesie for a Halloween costume? I mean, they’re pretty perfect for Trick or Treating! Keep you warm & then you immediately can hop into bed (with a chocolate bar or two or fifteen!)

What is your favourite Halloween snack? I’m totally a gummy candy girl. The hubs & I are taking the little guy trick or treating a few places & we already have the candy situation figured out… he gets any chocolate as I’m lactose intolerant, I get the gummy candies & we’ll split the chips. & the little guy… well he gets to be adorable in his baby flash costume. 

♥️

Edge Perfection Easy Peel Polish Barrier Review

So recently I mentioned that I seriously needed to invest in some new liquid latex because I’ve been out for a while & like magic the nail art gods listened! Or, at least, the lovely folks at Edge Perfection did as they sent me their peel off polish barrier to try! 

From their website:

Edge Perfection is…

5 Free, Thiuram Free, Ammonia Free, Cruelty Free, Vegan, Prop 65 Compliant, Canadian Cosmetics and EU Cosmetics Compliant too! 

Edge Perfection is a low oder polish barrier designed to make clean-up around the nails easier than ever. When using our product you’ll be happy knowing you’re using the highest most pure liquid latex on the market.

Pretty awesome claims & definitely had me curious! I’ll be honest… my previous experience with cuticle barriers only includes glue based peel off base coats (didn’t really work for me) & a Born Pretty Store liquid latex which did work but smelled weirdly fishy. So I was definitely excited to try out something new. 

My first experiment? Well a gradient of course!

So you can use this as a barrier while applying your base coat of colour (perfect for those whole have trouble painting with their non dominant hand!). I don’t have much trouble staying “within the lines” so I applied it around my cuticles after my base was already painted. It goes on a pale green-ish shade (above) with no smell that I could notice. When applying I suggest using a light hand to get the best application. The tub has a wand with brush inside. I like the fact the brush is shorter—makes for a more precise application. 

Apply to all nails. I always stick to one hand at a time as I find trying to sponge with latex on my fingers just leads to my fingers sticking together. Dry time is pretty speedy—as you can see above I started with my pinky & moved to my thumb & pinky was already dry by the time I grabbed my phone to snap a picture. It dries down almost clear but with a hint of the mint so it’s easy to find to pull off. 

Now it’s time for nail art! I sponged on my gradient using three shades (Color Club Silver Lake, Revlon Elusive, & Essie Under the Twilight) until they were well blended. Always a messy process. 

Using tweezers, pull off your latex barrier. Above is right after I peeled off Edge Perfection (before I applied top coat). As you can see, it really did keep things quite clean! There are a few little bits of polish left on the nail but that is just an issue of not getting the product close enough to the edge (middle finger) or not far enough down the finger (pinky) & can easily be fixed with a clean up brush & a little acetone. 

& after I cleaned up the little scraggly bits of polish left over & applied top coat. Pretty gradient nails! 

As you can see, Edge Perfection seriously minimizes the mess usually associated with gradients & other messy nail art. There is nothing worse than trying to do a cool but messy nail art look & spending half an hour cleaning up around the nail. I really, really like the brush applicator with it because it’s so easy to apply & get in as close to the nail as you need to be. I also really love the fact that there is no overwhelming weird smell. 

If you’re interested in purchasing Edge Perfection for yourself & giving it a try, you can purchase it directly from the Edge Perfection website as well as CVS & What’s Up Nails. Personally, I think it’s a great product & I was really impressed with results! I can’t wait to use it for more (messy) nail designs! Except to see a lot of gradients in my future. 

*PR SAMPLE* Some of these items were sent to me for review. However, all opinions are my own

Throwback Thursday Halloween Nails

October is quickly speeding by, so I need to amp up my Halloween designs! 🎃

 This time I decided to recreate a design I did all the way back in 2014 (originally done with @mynailpolish_addiction as part of a bestie twin nail collab.) Even though I had spiders, I always thought this design was adorable so I wanted to recreate it. 

For this manicure, the polishes used were:

  • Base Coat: OPI Natural Nail Base Coat
  • Top Coat: Cutex Quick Dry Top Coat
  • L’Oréal Orange You Jealous?
  • Color Club Wham! Pow!
  • OPI I Cannoli Wear OPI 
  • Sally Hansen Hard To Get Black Heart
  • Essie No Place like Chrome
  • Revlon Holographic Pearls
  • Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear Pacific Blue
  • The Base Coat Spiderweb nail stencil 
  • Small detail brush from Bundle Monster
  • Latex Free Make Up Sponge 

I thought these nails were super cute when I did them originally, & I still think they’re super cute. & I definitely feel like they turned out a little less wonky this time around. Sometimes when I feel like my nails suck & I have no talent & I’m feeling especially hard on myself it’s nice to do these recreations to see how far I’ve come. I may not be the most insanely talented nail artist, but I’m hugely proud of how far I’ve come. 

What do you think of this Halloween design? Let me know your thoughts in the comments below! 

Graveyard Nail Stencils with NailPolishCanada (& how to score your own set of vinyls for free!)

We’re over halfway to Halloween, which it’s time to get serious about Halloween nail designs! & what is more Halloween than spooky graveyard nails! Thanks to What’s Up Nails & Nail Polish Canada, I had a quick & easy time creating the spookiest of nails! 🎃 

The polishes used for this manicure were:

  • Base Coat: OPI Natural Nail Base Coat
  • Top Coat: Cutex Quick Dry Top Coat
  • Essie Go Ginza
  • OPI Auroa Berry-alis 
  • China Glaze Sleeping Under the Stars
  • Essence Back to Black 
  • What’s Up Nails Graveyard Stencils c/o: Nail Polish Canada 

These graveyard vinyls are great because they have multiple ways you can use them—my favourite is to use them as a stencil & paint in the design. I found it worked best by sponging on the black using a tiny piece of make up sponge. You could also apply the stencil to your nail & paint over top or you could use the vinyl itself & seal it all in with top coat. Each sheet of Graveyard vinyls comes with 20 vinyls (inner & outer) in small & large size which means you have a ton of graveyard nails to do in the lead up to Halloween. 

I’ve been lucky enough to team up with Nail Polish Canada to share a code for TEN of my readers to score their very own graveyard vinyls just in time for Halloween! You can click here & enter the code E75337KJX9A1B in order to claim your own set of vinyls. 

What do you think of these graveyard nails? What Halloween design are you most excited to wear this year? Let me know in the comments below. 🖤